In 'The Bread and the Wine' lecture, Neville Goddard introduces two spiritual 'diets': bread and fish, symbolizing worldly manifestations through imagination, and bread and wine, representing the higher art of mutual forgiveness. He argues that imagination is the creative power of reality and that persistence in a desired state will manifest that reality without harming others. The bread and fish metaphor teaches believers to imagine and persist in their desires to achieve worldly changes. The bread and wine diet involves distinguishing between the individual and the state they occupy, enabling unconditional forgiveness and the birth of the Lamb of God within. Goddard emphasizes that true spiritual awakening comes not from external rites but from practicing inner forgiveness and embracing every being as a reflection of God. By mentally embracing an 'enemy' and elevating their state, one opens the 'Western Gate' of the soul, leading to profound transformation. Ultimately, he offers practical guidance on using imagination both to manifest desires and to facilitate spiritual growth through compassion and forgiveness.
When we say that the supreme power that created the universe is the same power that is resident in man, people question that statement. Possibly everyone here owns a Bible, and when you go to court as a witness – say you are called to swear that you will tell the truth – and to swear you put your hand on the Bible, or the Word of God. Then you open the Bible and read: “Whatsoever things you desire, believe that you have them and you shall receive them. And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have aught against your brother, so that your Father in heaven may even so forgive you.” You put your hand on the book of truth and swear to tell the truth, and here is this statement in this very book on which you swear, and you don’t believe it. It is true. It is based on the statement: Imagination creates reality, for the Bible is addressed to the real man, Imagination. “For the Eternal body of man is The Imagination; that is God himself.” (Blake)
Is there anything you cannot imagine? Yet many cannot believe what the Book says is true. You admit you can imagine it, yet man does not believe that the thing imagined can be true. But I tell [you] that if you can imagine it and persist, your persistence will win and you will prove the truth of that statement in Mark 11 given above. However, that is on this level of the world. It is called in the Bible “feasting on the bread and fish,” or the loaves and fishes. We can bring about all the changes we desire in our world if we imagine we have it and persist in that state, for if I will persist I will win. But there is another diet spoken of in the Bible and it is called “bread and wine.” You can go and get all the things of the world with the bread and fish, and you are invited to feast on it if you wish, but the other diet does something to a man that not one in a billion would believe.
We are told that they despaired, for they could not believe it. They were told regarding this second diet: “If you eat it and drink it you do it in remembrance of me.” Who? The one who is called Jesus Christ in the Bible, or the spirit of forgiveness. You must feast on this, and it has nothing to do with a cup of wine or a little wafer. It is “the spirit of forgiveness.” It is “the mutual point of forgiveness between enemies, the birthplace of the Lamb of God.” And throughout eternity I forgive you and you forgive me, and just as he said: “This is the wine and this is the bread.” So if I know how to eat of that bread and drink of that wine I am forgiving every person in the world. But I cannot do it unless I see and understand the difference between an individual and the state the individual is occupying. If I condemn a man, or a society, or a thing, [and] I do not understand that they are only states, I am condemning [them]. Only when I begin to distinguish between the state and the individual can I forgive. Then I can take the most horrible beast in the world and embrace him. He might in this present state be my worst enemy, but if I know he is only in a state, I can take him mentally and embrace him and pull him out of that state into which he has fallen and put him into a nobler state. And that is the “point of mutual forgiveness between enemies, the birthplace [of] the Lamb of God.” So when man will eat this bread and drink this wine he can have anything there is, for there is only One, for the whole is given to us, if we know it. If any man gives you anything he gives you what is mine as well as yours, for everything is given to you and to me. All is ours. We are one.
Get things if you want them. But there is something far beyond the mere getting of things. But if you want [to] imagine things, they are here. Do not deny yourself anything you desire, unless you would be gaining by another’s alleged loss. That is not the way to do it. You do not take from anyone. You create what you desire only in Imagination, and if you persist in the state it will prove itself, and it will come to you in a way that will not hurt another, for it is my Father who is giving it to me. There is only God. Nothing is lost, for “all things by a law divine with one another’s being mingle.” So I do not have to ask you or another to play your part in bringing to pass what I want in this world. If you are relative to my drama you will be drawn into it. All I must do is eat of the bread and fish.
But there is the other diet, the bread and the wine. Then when I meet someone I call enemy I must know that he is in a state, and I must distinguish between the individual and the state into which he has fallen. For it is really God in the state. There is only God to play every part. So I can embrace that being I call my enemy and have him see in me his most interested friend. So I redeem him. That is the wine and the bread, and if I eat of the bread and drink of the wine I will actually give birth to the Lamb of God. What must I do to bring about this experience? It will not come to anyone unless he eats this bread and drinks this wine, for that is the unconditional forgiveness of sin. No matter what the person has ever done, if you can distinguish between the individual and the state into which that individual has fallen, you can embrace him, and then you prepare the way for the birth of the Lamb of God.
If you feel you cannot do it yet, then try the other diet. It is wonderful. If you want better health, or a finer job, or a larger world, then you use Imagination to create it. You hear and see and touch [as] if your dream were a reality, and then you persist, and [with] persistence you will win. If you will only persist in hearing and in seeing what you want to see, you cannot fail to realise it. It is [a] wonderful diet, and everyone is invited to feast upon it. “Whatsoever things you desire, when you pray believe that you have them, and you shall have them.” You need no other on the outside, but if you will have anything against another forgive him and your Father will forgive you. Some pious monk added the last part, which is now deleted from the newer, more accurate version of the Bible: “If you don’t forgive, then your Father will not forgive you.” That was not the original text. There is no punishment, no retribution. It is all up to us. We are walking through this fire which is called Earth, but if man only knows that these are states, he will understand that the spirit is walking [as] God, walking as the Son of God. Then it is the God we embrace, but man cannot believe it and he worships another, unknown God. Everyone who walks the face of this Earth is God, but there are unnumbered states created for a purpose, and we can use our minds to take anyone from an unlovely state.
You recall the recent discussion regarding juvenile delinquents. They could all be put away, we are told. The judge does not know that he could do something about it instead of just corralling them and putting them on the backs of the taxpayers. If the judge only knew [that] this being before him is in a state, and that he could create a new state and bring that being into a new state and enable him to become a noble wonderful being in society! But we cannot see that, so we continue to condemn the individual as the state. No one can feast on the bread and wine until he can see that, and then he can reach the place of mutual forgiveness of enemies, the birthplace of the Lamb of God. “So spoke the merciful Son of Heaven to those whose Western Gates were open, but sleeping humanity heard him not, and slumbered on.” Only those whose Western Gates were open heard it. [And] those go forward to create new states for another and so he saves himself, for man is saved by (and only by) the saving of his fellow man. Finally in each the Western Gate opens and then the Lamb of God is born.
A good Catholic friend said to me: “What do you do to have this experience?” And I said, “Drink the wine and eat the bread.” He did not understand, for he takes Communion every Sunday. I said: “Has anything happened to you? Has there been an expansion in [your] consciousness? You have taken it for these many years.” But that is not the bread or wine I mean. The wine is mutual forgiveness of all enmity throughout eternity, just as the dear Savior said. If I cannot embrace a being and feel myself thrill to his good fortune, I have not taken the wine or the bread. But if I do it within and not by taking something in a tangible form, then I have partaken of the true bread and wine, and we have schoolrooms within schoolrooms. It does not matter who you are or when you were born; that has nothing to do with the awakening of God in man. Who are the “right” people? Everyone is God.
I had a long distance call yesterday from New York. The lady who called me is very, very rich by the standards of diamonds and money. She has not fingers enough for all her diamonds. She has everything she wants – except one thing: she wants to be happily married to someone in the social register who has more money than she has, and [is] at least twenty years younger. She is seventy-five, but she wants more money and bigger diamonds. She said to me: “Look what I have done for my son by using this law. He can now send his four girls to private school. I did this for him when I persisted. But I cannot seem to bring this picture for myself into being.” I said: “Anything you can imagine you [can] create. But you are thinking the market is limited because there are so few in the register or in your social sphere. Everyone walking the Earth is God and there is no greater background than that. These people are only in states, and if you took them out of that state you might not care for them at all – the same being, but another state. You do not distinguish the being from the state. You used this same law to put your son where he now is. You can realise your dream of being married to someone richer and younger than you are, if that is your concept.” It is not mine. We judge no one, for when you awaken you do not see the state. You only see the individual who has fallen into the state, and when you see that, you do not meet anyone you could not embrace and pull out of an unlovely state and put him into another state. Then we can intermingle as one being.
Now, he may go back into the old state, like Lot’s wife. “How many times must I do it, Lord?” “Seventy times seven.” That is how it is. If a child of yours fell downstairs, would you not pick him up seventy times seven? God is playing all the parts. There are unnumbered schools teaching that you suffer because of something you did in a previous life. You must do this or that. You do not awaken by sitting on a mountaintop, or by diets, or by joining some “ism.” You can only awake as you eat the bread and drink the wine, for that is the mutual forgiveness of enemies, and that place is the birthplace of the Lamb of God. You do not say to another: “I forgive you.” That means nothing. But you bring him before your mind’s eye and embrace him. You are in states that seem to oppose, but when you feel that touch, you are opening the Western Gate, for the Western Gate is touch. The Southern Gate is sight. The Eastern Gate is scent. The whole world remains asleep because the Western Gate is [closed] in you. And then you eat of this bread. You touch the one you embrace. Embrace mentally the very one who would cut off your head. Then the Western Gate is open in you, and then you eat this bread and drink of this wine, and then you prepare it. It is not by joining any orthodox church or going on some diet. You can sit on the Himalayas until you freeze and cannot do it. But you walk the marketplace and mingle with God (which is man) and then you have unnumbered opportunities every day to eat this bread and drink this wine.
Distinguish between the individual and the state he is in. [Transcriber’s note: Neville tells here the previously told story {of the} incorrigible child in the New York school who was redeemed by the wise use of her teacher’s imagination in seeing her in a newer and lovelier state, with corresponding results. The child was not blemished; it was a state.] You have never been tarnished. Hitler, you say? Stalin? The states were horrible, but the individual has never been touched. We do not give birth to the Lamb of God by condemnation. We must reach the point of mutual forgiveness of enemies, [the] birthplace of the Lamb of God. Then everything begins to unfold and you will know and understand that everything said in the Book is being said about you. There is only the one Son, and God is begetting that Son unceasingly from you and from me forever. If you want the Son to be born in you, you must practice drinking the wine; or, if you want to, feed on the bread and the fish. Bring before your mind’s eye your world as you want it. Hear, touch, see, and feel what you would if your desire were true, and you will change your world in harmony with that image. You can make it conform to your image, but beyond that are worlds within worlds. This universe, which seems so vast – a million light years in diameter – is only the skin of a greater world, for there are endless worlds within worlds. So when God created me and lit me, therefore I predated the thing created. So before the world was I AM. I begin then to remember who I am and I am He, for God and man are one. We awaken by drinking the wine and eating the bread. You can practice it all day long. You do not leave where you are or go anywhere to do it. You can do it standing in a bar. It has nothing to do with moral virtues. These are only states.
Then you will understand the words of Paul: “Drink no [longer] water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.” “Water” is psychological truth. Stop simply absorbing it and begin to put into practice what you know; that is turning the water into wine. It’s the first great miracle in the Bible. No more just reading and not practicing. I can absorb the water, but now I must take a little wine – or put into practice what I have heard and so transform your world – and that is life.
The 11th [chapter] of Mark is true: “Whatsoever you desire, when you pray believe that you have it, and you shall receive it.” “And as you stand praying if you have aught against your brother, forgive him, that your Father may forgive you.” But you cannot forgive until you distinguish between the state, and the individual in the state. You create for [him] that other state, where he is your friend, bring him out of his former state, and embrace him. That is the opening the Western Gate – and then something happens within you. So, who spoke this? “The merciful Son of Heaven to those whose Western Gate was open, but sleeping humanity heard him not and slumbered on.” [Blake.] I can speak and you may not hear. This diet may not appeal to you. It is only a state which you are in at present, for you are still God, no matter what, and you are still unblemished. But all will awaken, for God plays all the parts. Therefore “disaster beyond redemption is impossible.” Let no one tell you [that you] are better than the other. You may be in a more wonderful state than the other, but that is all. Good and evil belong to the tree of knowledge. We are rising up to [a] more expanding world as we awaken. You will step into another world as real as this one, and yet behind you in this world you [will] discover you have left a little garment – your body. All things exist in Imagination, and it is one with the supreme imagining that creates and sustains the universe.
Now, you take the diet you desire. If you are not yet interested in embracing someone you think is your opponent, and all you want is to transcend your present level, then live in the state that proves you have done it. You may never, after it comes about, give credit to your wonderful Imagination, for it happens so naturally that you will think it would have happened anyway. You may discount that your Imagination did it. But the day will come when you will want to transcend just things, and you will want that which does not have earthly value. You will see those with great possessions and know they are actually only moments from the grave, but up to the last second before they flicker out they are still only conscious [of] possessions. But it is all right, for they too will awaken in time, though they do not even know that there is someone who walks among them who is awake. In the world beyond worlds you are completely awake and not known because of possessions – because then you own the world. For there you know that you and your Father are one, and he creates all out of nothing. Whatever you desire to create you create, and you do not need atoms to do it; forever those you create out of your Imagination.
But tonight bring a friend (or he may be an opponent) before your mind’s eye and represent him to yourself as being in a finer state, or freer, and then be faithful to your mental structure. Then, in a way no one knows, it will take on reality in your world and crystallise and become a fact. Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard’s lecture frames the Bible not merely as scripture but as a manual for the art of imagination and creation. By positioning man’s Imagination as the Eternal body of God, he invites listeners to view every scriptural promise as an instruction to enact through deliberate mental states. The ‘bread and fish’ diet is the foundational practice of creative visualization—imagining desires as fulfilled to alter one’s external world. This approach underscores his core teaching: reality is subjective and must be molded by inner conviction and persistence.
Beyond material manifestation lies the more profound practice of ‘bread and wine,’ which Goddard equates to the spirit of forgiveness. He reinterprets Communion’s symbols as a call to unconditional forgiveness—seeing the sinner’s true self behind every state of error. This mutual forgiveness between enemies, he contends, is the birthplace of the Lamb of God, a metaphor for Christ consciousness born within the soul. It is not a sacrament of bread and cup but a psychological rite of embracing and transmuting negative states.
A key psychological insight is the distinction between the individual and the state they occupy. Goddard asserts that condemnation stems from identifying a person with their fallen state, whereas true compassion arises from recognizing their divine essence. By mentally extracting someone from an unlovely state and placing them in a nobler one, the practitioner redeems both the other and themselves. This dynamic opens what Blake called the Western Gate—the sense of touch and empathy—and catalyzes inner transformation.
Practically, Goddard encourages listeners to apply these diets in everyday life, whether standing in line or walking through a marketplace. The same imaginative law that brings about better health, wealth, and success also fosters spiritual elevation when directed toward forgiveness. He reassures that no external church ritual or esoteric discipline is needed—only the disciplined use of imagination and persistent mental revision. Through examples from biblical passages to modern anecdotes, he demonstrates the universal applicability of this inner work.
Finally, Goddard situates his teaching within a larger mystical cosmology of worlds within worlds. The material universe is but the skin of a greater reality sustained by supreme imagining. By awakening through forgiveness and creative visualization, man regains his divine identity and co-creates with God. In this light, every human interaction becomes an opportunity to feast on the true bread and wine, forging unity and birthing the Lamb of God within humanity.
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